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Tuesday, October 02, 2012

A Difficult Subject

Don't miss this story from yesterday's NY Times about children and grandchildren of Auschwitz survivors who, as a sign
of respect or remembrance, have had their elders' concentration camp
numbers tattooed on their own arms. There are thousands of ways
(more than six million, I'd guess) to respond to the Holocaust. I found
this one to be particularly moving.

When I was growing up in New Jersey, I had several friends whose parents were concentration camp survivors. I thought this was "cool," as a bank employee said to one of the people in the video that accompanies the story. When I asked my boyhood friends about it, they invariably said their parents "never talk about it." In the past 10 or 15 years, though, there has been a lot of effort to record these people's stories before they pass from the scene.

Don't miss the slide show and the video that accompany the story. The first three photographs upset me for another reason. To me, they are too edgy, like something out of a Colors of Benetton ad, so the impact is something different than I think is appropriate. Emily disagrees with me.

Currently Reading

In Defense of a Liberal Education, by Fareed Zakaria. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, the damn Kindle edition doesn't include the publication date.

"The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has pointed to three ideas associated with the humanities that have positively shaped the world. First, he notes the philosopher Isaiah Berlin's warning that the belief in a single, all-encompassing truth inevitably produces blind arrogance, possibly leading to dangerous consequences. Second, he highlights John Rawls's contribution to political thought: that the most just society would be the one you would choose if you did not know how rich or poor or how talented or untalented you were when born into it. ... Lastly, Kristof highlights the work of Peter Singer, who has brought the treatment of animals and the pain that human beings often needlessly cause them to the fore of our moral consciousness."